4-Way SSD Round-Up, OCZ, Corsair, Kingston, ST

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Introduction and the OCZ Vertex

The SSD market is incredibly hot at the moment. Not only is there a consistent influx of new products that seemingly leapfrog the previous generation in nearly every way, but already established products have been treated to firmware updates that enhance their performance and capabilities as well.

Over the course of the last few months, we rounded up a number of solid state drives and featured products from Intel, OCZ, and others independently. Ultimately, we found that Intel's X25-M series of drives was the current kingpin in terms of overall performance, but since our initial look, a slew of new drives have hit the market and Intel has updated the X25-M's firmware to eliminate a potential performance degradation issue. Due to all of the recent activity in the SSD space, we thought it was a good time to round-up another assortment of solid state drives to get a better feel for the current landscape.

We're going to show you four drives here, the OCZ Vertex Series SSD, the Corsair P256, Super Talent's UltraDrive ME, and finally a Kingston SSD Now drive, that's based on Intel's Technology. First up, let's take a peek at the OCZ Vertex series drive and then we'll move on to the rest...

OCZ Vertex Series SSD

OCZ's Vertex Series of SSDs use Samsung MLC NAND flash memory, coupled to 64MB of cache and a new IndiLinx IDX110M00-LC controller that does away with the many stuttering and performance issues that plagued early JMicron controllers. The drives feature the same 2.5" form factor as all of OCZ's previous SSD offerings and are available in capacities ranging from 30GB to 250GB. The drive you see here is the 120GB model, but we should point out that its actually a 128GB drive--OCZ branded it as 120GB drive because that is its formatted capacity within the OS.

OCZ Vertex Series SATA II SSD

Specifications and Features

Available in 30GB, 60GB, 120GB, 250GB capacities

64MB Onboard Cache

Seek Time: <.1ms

Slim 2.5" Design

99.8 x 69.63 x 9.3mm

Lightweight 77g

Operating Temp: 0C ~ 70C

Storage Temp: -45C ~ +85C

Low Power Consumption: 2W in operation, .5W in stand by

Shock Resistant 1500G

RAID Support

MTBF 1.5 million hours

2 year warranty

120GB Max Performance

Read: Up to 250 MB/s

Write: Up to 180MB/s

Sustained Write: Up to 100MB/s

According to OCZ, the Vertex Series drives have varying read / write speeds. The 120GB model, is rated for read speeds up to 250 MB/s, with write speeds up to 180MB/s and sustained writes of up to 100MB/s.